Saturday, October 24, 2015

Flaming Hotcakes - A Country Kitchen With Abby Lab

Abby the Lab here.  Does your Mom or Dad remember the show Green Acres? The premise of the show - a successful New York lawyer and his spoiled society wife move to the small town of Hooterville to live on a small farm. One of the more comical aspects to the show was stunning Lisa Douglas' attempts to cook, especially her specialty Hotscakes!, which could also be used as a replacement head gasket on a farm tractor and were served with Martini shaken coffee. 

Other kitchen specialties of Lisa included:
Fried dry oatmeal
Crepe Suzette (flaming hotscake)
Vaffles (hotscakes pressed in a waffle iron)
Tunafish and jelly sandwiches
Tortillas (actual paper plates)
Hot Kebobs (flaming hotscakes on a skewer)
Chicken Sandwich (a rubber chicken between two slices of white bread)
Polarized Chicken (it beeps when it's ready)
and for dessert  . . .
Fruitcake (which had the entire top of a whole pineapple sticking out of the top)

and the ever popular 20 Pound Pound Cake
I think my Mom has an actual copy of the Green Acres Stove
Our house is sort of like the Green Acres house as we renovate room by room.  An antique farmhouse sink is going here under the "new" stained glass window.
Throw me a hotscake Dad!

Like many modern women, Lisa Douglas sometimes resorted to convenience foods such as Dee Dee's Dehydrated Mason Dixon Fried Chicken Dinner and Dee Dee's Dehydrated  New Orleans Pompano (which included a bottle of dehydrated wine).
Her loving husband took it in stride, however, somehow mustering the energy to spend the day working on the tractor on nothing more than hotscakes sandwiches and hot water soup.

My Mom does a lot better, and every Saturday, she makes Hotscakes.  It's her "splurge meal" of the week if she's watching her calories and she says it's worth it.

Today's Buttermilk Cornbread Hotscakes 
This version  tastes just like cornbread, but lighter, with all the crisp wonderful edges that cornbread gets (as good as pizza bones).

1 and 1/4 cup stone ground cornmeal (get the good stuff, not No Name Brand Cornmeal Dust).
1/2 cup flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
2 dashes salt
1 egg
1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk (or make your own by adding 1 T, lemon juice to milk).
1 Tablespoon melted lard
1 Tablespoon melted butter

Mix, cook on a cast iron griddle.

Served with butter and maple syrup or molasses, they are tasty and filling.



Perfect for a day with the tractor mangler (don't laugh, Mom came home and found this in the garage - a surprise from Dad from an auction somewhere)
Come on Mom - Nothing says "I love you" like your own mangler!   
Or a plate of hotscakes.


Sing along with me -

"Green acres is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me.
Land spreading out, so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside".

9 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    HHeheheheheheeh BOL.. .Oh Abby, I DOOO remember Greenacres; it was very early days of being allowed to watch the tube telly and my mum used to cringe at the 'cookings'!!! what fun memories. I make lots of griddle cakes, but had not thought to use cornmeal... will be giving these a go!!! That looks like an industrial mangle such as hotels would use for their crisp white sheets... now most places 'outsource' such work. Hope you have a supery-dupery Sunday with your peeps darlin'... hugs and wags, YAM-aunty xxx

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    1. The mangler was free when he bought some metal working shop equipment at the auction (they just wanted to get rid of it). He has it working! So hopefully it will go to a good home as ironing and I have the "doctrine of mutual destruction" thing going on and I don't think I want to try and iron with anything bigger than my travel iron :-)

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    2. Hari OM
      ..hehehe.. I suspect that to be a very good plan - I have frightening memories of my grandmother's little home-sized, hand-wound one and that was bad enough!!! Yxx

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  2. Hi Abby, those hot cakes sure do look delicious, I am drooling over them, they do indeed say "I love you!" it looks like you had a great day! Love and Licks from your furiend Frank XxxxxxxxX

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    1. Frankie - Mom is going to make a trip to the grist mill near home next weekend before they quit grinding the corn for the year. We'll send you a bag for your Mom if it is still available - it makes the BEST cornbread and pancakes. Kisses
      Abby Lab

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  3. Lol my mommy reminds me of the wife on green acres!!

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    1. I still laugh that my daughter asked if I still had some of my "bell bottoms" as she wanted one for a Halloween costume. Short of bacon grease and a shoe horn, I don't think I could get in or out of ANY of my pants from the 70's. (I graduated in 76)

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  4. Yes, ghostwriter remembers that show. She used to make pancakes every Sunday too. She also remembers when her own Mom had a washing machine with a mangler on it. Hope you haven't guessed her age by now.

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  5. haha, loved that show as a kid. Just so glad that we don't have to climb up the telephone pole to make a call. Enjoy those hotcakes!

    Wyatt' s Mom

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